User-Centred Design of Mobile Services for Tourists

Abstract

In recent years, mobile technology has developed fast in Europe. We have the basic hardware but the content, in the form of services, is often missing or unattractive to the consumer. Tourism is an industry in which mobile services should be especially valuable to the user but so far few mobile applications have been successful in the market. Mobile services are said to suffer, among other things, from poor usability. The user-centred design (UCD) approach, which is widely applied in the design of mobile services and applications, is supposed to remedy this defect. We assigned 5 groups of international, advanced level Information Systems students the design of a mobile service for tourists while applying the UCD approach. We analysed and evaluated their design process as well as the prototype. Our objective is to find out how the UCD design process guided their work: What difficulties there were in the application of the UCD? Does the UCD set some undesirable constraints to design work?